In the late 1800s, settlements, road-building, and livestock grazing began to impact the region’s forests. Logging removed the most valuable and fire-resilient trees, such as giant ponderosas in the east Cascade slope. After 1910, fire suppression became the norm for forest management, largely in response to catastrophic fires that tore through the landscape and claimed many human lives. This meant putting out any and all forest fires as quickly as possible. More recently, scientists and forest managers have reconsidered this strategy of excluding all fire.

Meet the Ponderosa Pine

While no human has lived through the storied history of fire in the region, we can look to an iconic tree to learn about the impact of fire suppression.

The Inner Tree

Imagine if you had your entire medical record, including all your checkups, physicals, and surgeries, inscribed on your skin, such that one look could provide a rough overview of all the times you were injured, stressed, or malnourished. A tree’s rings, which build just underneath the bark as seasons and years pass, are such a depiction. Cutting out a cross section of a tree’s trunk produces a “cookie” that gives us access to this story.

This cutout of a ponderosa pine (known as a “cookie”) allows us to study tree rings to learn what the tree experienced. The curves on the cookie’s left side (marked with years) show how the tree grew back over its wounds in response to fire.

Each of the alternating light and dark rings is a year of tree growth. Although each ring will be naturally thinner as the tree ages, there is much that tree rings can tell us:

The cookie clearly indicates that the tree experienced regular intervals of fire until 1908, but that this frequency declined dramatically in the 20th century. What does this change mean for trees, and what are the implications for forests?

Living with Wildfire

When a ponderosa pine is young, it is susceptible to fire, but by the time the tree reaches 4 or 5 years, it has begun to develop a thick bark that protects it from low-intensity fires that may sweep through every few years. The same fires remove competition from shrubs and less fire-resistant trees, such as true firs like grand fir, and create the open sunny spaces that allow the ponderosa to grow strong and tall.

Fire-Suppressed Forest

With the exclusion of fire, trees that would normally be cleared out by wildfire can grow dense. The density and layering of trees provide a path for flames to reach the high foliage of the ponderosa and potentially move from one crown of a tree to another. Smaller trees, shrubs, and brush can fuel even hotter flames, and send the blaze upward into the ponderosa pine’s crown. These crown fires are the most devastating kind of fire for pine trees.

This forest stand is thick and contains large and small trees in close proximity. Vegetation and other debris are crowded on the forest floor. This forest stand has been untouched by fire for almost 80 years.The overabundance of vegetation and debris on the forest floor becomes fuel for wildfires to completely burn through a forest stand. As the fire moves from the ground into the trees’ foliage, it burns the crowns of tall trees, causing historically resilient trees to die, too.Any trees left standing are now dead (referred to as snags). While these snags are important for wildlife, they will eventually fall, too. It will take decades of regrowth to see the large trees become valuable to wildlife, carbon storage, and timber harvest again. Many more decades, or even centuries, will pass before new snags are available for wildlife. Additionally, the intense heat from the fire changed the soil composition, making it more likely to erode into streams.

Paradoxically, suppressing fires ultimately increases the risk of enormous, catastrophic wildfires. The fallout is detrimental to both wildlife and human society. So, what can we do to reduce the frequency of catastrophic wildfires?

Healthy Forests Mean Healthier and Safer Communities

Restoring Forests

We are working innovatively with tribes, the United States Forest Service, and other partners and agencies to manage forests and wildfires. This includes ecological thinning, where loggers harvest smaller-diameter trees that still hold commercial value. Such practices enable the continuity of jobs in the forest, while giving the ponderosa pine and other fire-resistant trees more room to grow.

After forest thinning, professional fire teams can conduct controlled burns under safe conditions. These burns mimic the frequent, small fires that historically cleaned out the shrubs and small trees of the forest’s undergrowth.

Consequently, larger, natural wildfires will not lead to the complete loss of large, towering trees.

Thinning trees and intentional prescribed burning has resulted in a forest stand that contains large trees with space in between. Vegetation and other debris are minimal on the forest floor, making the stand more resilient to high-severity wildfires.A restored dry forest with adequate space between trees can prevent wildfire from moving from the ground to the tree canopy.The majority of trees are scarred at their trunks, but remain alive. The ground is covered with a mix of soil and ash, with a few snags for wildlife. This forest can regrow and withstand future wildfires, thus holding on to its timber value and ecological benefits. Future wildfires can also be safely managed if they threaten human communities.

Well needed information. Thank you for sharing. I worry about the health of the western forest because of this past fire season that destroyed so much. Was there an up side to such devastation? Thank you for your article.